looks out for foreigners at five louis, and lets her regular customers
know when she is disengaged. We have known them for the last ten years;
we see them every evening all the year round in the same places, except
when they are making a hygienic sojourn at Saint Lazare or at Lourcine."

Duroy no longer heard him. One of these women was leaning against their
box and looking at him. She was a stout brunette, her skin whitened with
paint, her black eyes lengthened at the corners with pencil and shaded
by enormous and artificial eyebrows. Her too exuberant bosom stretched
the dark silk of her dress almost to bursting; and her painted lips, red
as a fresh wound, gave her an aspect bestial, ardent, unnatural, but
which, nevertheless, aroused desire.

She beckoned with her head one of the friends who was passing, a blonde
with red hair, and stout, like herself, and said to her, in a voice loud
enough to be heard: "There is a pretty fellow; if he would like to have
me for ten louis I should not say no."

Forestier turned and tapped Duroy on the knee, with a smile. "That is
meant for you; you are a success, my dear fellow. I congratulate you."

The ex-sub-officer blushed, and mechanically fingered the two pieces of
gold in his waistcoat pocket.

The curtain had dropped, and the orchestra was now playing a waltz.

Duroy said: "Suppose we take a turn round the promenade."

"Just as you like."

They left their box, and were at once swept away by the throng of
promenaders. Pushed, pressed, squeezed, shaken, they went on, having
before their eyes a crowd of hats. The girls, in pairs, passed amidst
this crowd of men, traversing it with facility, gliding between elbows,
chests, and backs as if quite at home, perfectly at their ease, like
fish in water, amidst this masculine flood.

Duroy, charmed, let himself be swept along, drinking in with
intoxication the air vitiated by tobacco, the odor of humanity, and the
perfumes of the hussies. But Forestier sweated, puffed, and coughed.

"Let us go into the garden," said he.

And turning to the left, they entered a kind of covered garden, cooled
by two large and ugly fountains. Men and women were drinking at zinc
tables placed beneath evergreen trees growing in boxes.

"Another bock, eh?" said Forestier.

"Willingly."

They sat down and watched the passing throng.

From time to time a woman would stop and ask, with stereotyped smile:
"Are you going to stand me anything?"